Much of computer science relates to data management. Software programs support various methods of allowing the user to input, process and save data. The array of software applications that manage data in this way includes programs designed for individual users, multiple users of intranets, the internet, the worldwide web, and e-commerce. Examples of such software applications in these contexts include word processing, spread sheets, web page design, contact management, graphics, financial transactions, program development systems, e-commerce shopping carts, and so on.
Social psychology studies show people tend to favor the shortest route to accomplishing a goal. Because of this, the software and computer industry tend to enhance ease and speed of programs and data management. By way of example, website usability professionals such as the Nielsen Norman Group have found that increasing usability on an e-commerce website by 10% can increase sales by 10% to 400% depending on a combination of usability factors on the overall design, including usability of the shopping cart.
A good example of how time saving steps are eagerly adopted by the computing and software marketplace is the history of printing a document on a computer-driven printer. In the early days of computers, the user had to input a series of nearly 20 commands in the correct order before the printer was activated. Now, users take it for granted that all they need do is click “print” and the sequence (now hidden but still in place) will produce a printed version of their document.
Currently, the rule of data entry is that a task cue must be combined with a navigation command before the user may leave a page with new data on it and have that new data recorded. In effect, this is a “rule” of computer science, which is to see the navigation command as only the navigation command, and not to identify that there may be a separate and distinct command that may be broken out of it to save the user time and/or the server bandwidth. As used herein, a client process will primarily involve the user interface and a server process will primarily involve data processing and/or data management. The client process and the server process may reside in the same computer, or distinct computers.
What is needed are techniques which enhance the experience of users of computers and computer-based services, so that data entry and management in individual user applications, intranets, the internet and worldwide web are quicker, easier, more energy efficient, and more natural. What is also needed is a way to reduce server load.
As used herein, a computer includes at least one data processor and at least one instruction processor, where each data processor is directed by at least one instruction processor. Computers including more than one instruction processor may include two instruction processors executing the same instruction format, or alternatively, two instruction processors executing different instruction formats.
As used herein, an operating system controls at least one computer to execute at least one application. Often the operating system initializes one or more of the instruction processors and one or more of the data processors to start the application. Often the operating system provides an interface to a memory device such as a disk drive by maintaining a file management system for accessing the data stored on the disk drive. An example of an operating system includes the early versions of BASIC found on 8 bit microprocessor systems such as the ALTAIR 8800.
As used herein, a real-time operating system is an operating system for managing the execution of more than one application executing and using the computer during a single period of time. This is achieved using a data structure known as a task list. The task list includes at least one, and usually many, task entries.
An application is executed by a real-time operating system by creating at least one task entry. Each task entry includes an instruction pointer into accessibly coupled instruction memory as to where the task will next execute an instruction, a data configuration to be loaded by the data processor doing data processing for the application, and a instruction configuration to be loaded into the instruction processor to direct the data processing.
Some computers have only one data processor and one instruction processor, and the instruction pointer, the data and instruction configurations may be merged into internal state configuration. Often, the task entry is designated by a pointer to a memory location, where the internal state configuration is stored.
Examples of a real-time operating system include command line versions of UNIX, as invented and developed at Bell Labs in the twentieth century, and the OS operating system of the IBM 360 and 370 computers.
A window operating system is a real-time operating system supporting a user interface including the possibility of multiple windows and at least one interactive user input device. A window will refer to an at least two dimension display domain which the user can perceive through a display device being controlled by the computer. Each window is associated with at least one application, which begins or continues execution when the window is opened.
An interactive user input device may include a keyboard, a mouse, a joystick, a touchpad, a voice recognition interface, and/or a gesture recognition interface. The mouse and/or joystick may portray motion across a two or more dimensional movement domain, possibly sensing not only position, but also speed, acceleration, and/or some form of pressure.
A navigation cue refers to a recognized command from the user received through at least one of the interactive user input devices directing the computer through the window operating system, to navigate the one or more perceived windows to either open a new window, close an existing window, bring a window into perception by the user, or minimize a window in terms of the user's perception. These various activities can be recognized and altered by the use of hooks, which are defined interface locations within the accessible memory. They are specific to each window operating system, and in some cases, to each implementation of the window operating system.
By way of example, most window operating systems support navigation cues through mouse operations which open and close windows, and trigger applications to open new windows.
Another example, some window operating systems support navigation cues through a task bar, often including task buttons, which trigger the opening of applications such as a web browser or word processor.
Another example, some applications support multiple views running with the same application and traversed within the same window by navigation cues, for instance, multiple tabs to different web sites by a web browser, and multiple views of the same or different documents by a word processor.
A further example, some window operating systems support navigation cues based upon keyboard operations, such as keystroke combinations or sequences that successively bring to the front each open window of the window operating system.
Consider how applications and the computers running applications fail or crash. An application's execution is disrupted when the application enters an indeterminate or illegal state. Often these situations lead to the application doing unpredictable and/or damaging behavior, such as corrupting the contents of files, sometimes damaging the integrity of the file system being managed by the operating system. In the early days of operating systems, often the computer would literally stop or spew reams of gibberish. Often then, and to this day, computers must be reset, possibly by turning off and on, to restart the operating system, in order to regain control.
Real-time operating systems inherit this weakness from operating systems and add a new problem to the mix. It is now possible to demand more resources be used at the same time than exist. Example, execution of two or more applications, each fitting in the available memory, but collectively requiring more than what is available, causes the real-time operating system a new problem.
Often, the real-time operating system possesses tools to at least partially mitigate the situation, such as a virtual memory sub-system using part of one or more disk drives as a temporary store to augment the accessible memory. These tools work in a pinch, but tend to be fragile, and overloaded real-time operating systems tend to crash, often due to memory conflicts, in which one application writes on the memory of another.
Window operating systems inherit the weaknesses of both real-time operating systems and operating systems, in general. They add yet another weakness, the tendency for a window to not always release allocated resources successfully. Over time, many window operating system environments become clogged with the resource allocations, which were not successfully released when their use was over.
A comment should be made here, the software community is well aware of these weaknesses, and has instituted various error handling procedures to try and limit the unpredictability of application crashes. The hardware community is also aware of these weaknesses, and has invented various memory manager circuits to minimize memory conflict problems. With all due regard to these noble efforts, the fact remains that computers and the applications running on them crash, and people all over the world continue to lose data, money and time to such failures. Methods and mechanisms are needed to mitigate these losses due to these crashes.